


Most Dazzling

by cbstrike



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Humor, Post-Troubled Blood, Sexy, Unresolved Sexual Tension, cormoran is a superb lover, dirty mouth, ladies who lunch, lorelei has a, this is canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:21:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28234587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cbstrike/pseuds/cbstrike
Summary: While following a client's wife out to lunch with her girlfriends, Robin overhears a conversation she definitely shouldn't have.Part I: Robin overhears.
Relationships: Lorelei Bevan/Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott & Cormoran Strike
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45





	Most Dazzling

It was lucky that Robin opted for a disguise. A short dark wig and dark rimmed glasses. She hadn’t been sure. There was no reason for it other than she preferred being in some sort of disguise when she might be within spitting distance of a mark. But boy was she glad for it now.

She turned around sharply, back to the table where their client’s wife was with two other ladies, both of which she recognised.

“Switch with me.” she whispered urgently to Michelle, but was already sitting on the chair where the lunch group would have no chance of seeing her face. This was very much not the plan, but Michelle was adaptable and took this new positioning in stride.

Robin set up her phone to record, putting it in her purse and dangling it on her chair’s back rest. She worried she wouldn’t be able to pick up the conversation, but the women seem to be enjoying mimosas with their brunch, and were speaking quite loudly.

“Clayton is such a bore,” she heard their client’s wife complain. “I’d been in Vegas two days and he was whining for me to come back. Only man in London not thrilled to have his wife and kids out of his hair for a week.”

“Oh, but Clayton adores you, Ellen!” replied the voice of a woman she recognised was Lorelai.

“Yes, I know.” droned Ellen, sounding bored by this. “It’s quite pathetic.”

The women laughed.

“What about you, Lori? How’s it going with what’s-his-name?” asked Ellen. Robin’s attention may be towards this conversation, but her eyes were on Michelle who was nonchalantly perusing the menu.

“Gerard, is it?” inquired Ellen.

“Gaspard?” Lorelai corrected her. “Back in Paris. Drove him up to the airport, actually. That’s why I’m late.”

“So, how is that going?” asked Ellen.

An exaggerated huff. Robin thought Lorelai might have sighed.

“Oh, what’s wrong with this one now?” asked their other lunch companion who Robin knew was April Wardle, DI Wardle’s wife.

“He’s just…” Lorelai started, sounding unsure.

“Jesus, Lori!” admonished April. “You’re still not hung up on—!”

“April!” Lorelai exclaimed, heading her off and Robin looked at Michelle again whose expression of disinterest hadn’t changed. Robin daren’t speak, so close they were to the table. But she wondered if Michelle knew April Wardle. But surely if she did, Michelle would’ve been just as concerned that her cover would be blown.

Instead, Michelle gestured for the waiter and they both ordered sandwiches.

“Well,” April asked. “Are you?”

“Fuck no!” Lorelai replied immediately. “Mind you, Gaspard could take a few notes...”

“Who are we talking about?” Ellen asked sounding confused.

Robin’s own heartbeat was speeding up. Worried Cormoran’s name will come up. This was bad. She wanted to leave, but the women seemed boozy and chatty and surely would spill more secrets to each other and maybe one of them would be something she could use.

“Mr. Hephaestus, of course! Ellen, keep up!” said April.

“Oh!” said Ellen, interest piqued. “Oh, Lori!” she then said, also sounding as disapproving as April. “It’s been ages! I’ve had two children since you split up with that lump! You can’t still be—”

“I’m not!” Lorelai protested. She was saying other things but the surge of anger Robin was feeling was making her deaf to their lurid gossiping. _Hephaestus! Jesus!_ She thought, incensed, knowing full well who they meant and why they called him that. He was the ugly one, misshapen. The crippled blacksmithing god married off to Aphrodite.

 _The nerve!_ Robin thought, seething. Lorelai was beautiful, but _Aphrodite_? And the utter offensiveness of even talking about Cormoran’s leg—

“But isn’t that a bit… problematic?” Robin heard Ellen continue. “You know, because he’s _actually_ —”

Lorelai laughed, it grated on Robin’s ears. “Oh, darling! He _enjoyed_ it!”

Robin could instantly feel the tips of her ears growing hot. A waiter had put down identical club sandwiches in front of her and Michelle. She still looked nonplussed at this exchange, although why wouldn’t she be? She didn’t know Lorelai, doesn’t seem to know April, and they haven’t mentioned Cormoran by name.

“ _What?”_ Ellen asked, surprised.

“Hadn’t I told you about this before?” Lorelai asked, sounding surprised.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Right, well, you know that thing that Boris turned me on to that I could never get anyone else to to do for me?”

“You mean one of your sex skits?”

The women tittered.

“Well, Mr. Hephaestus took up the role most superbly!” said Lorelai with a flourish.

“Really?” April asked, sounding intrigued. “I wouldn’t have guessed, by the look of him. Mind, he does look like he could throw one about pretty deftly.”

More titters. Robin put her coffee in front of her face, thinking maybe if the heat of it travelled to her face enough, Michelle would think she was blushing from the cup and not, well.

“You have no idea.” Lorelai confirmed, sounding purposely tantalising now.

“So Lori,” inquired April, “How big?”

Robin could only hear this conversation, not see it. She could only hear giggling now and, “Jesus, Lori! You have to say when!”

When Lorelai still hadn’t said ‘when’, Ellen continued. “Okay, now that just looks painful—”

“When!”

The ladies giggled again. Robin tried not to think about the image this conjured. She was incensed at the intrusion of privacy, but she also thought back to those other times when she was with her girlfriends, in noisy restaurants, not imagining they would be overheard by anyone who knew what they were talking about.

She partook herself, jumping with her own complaints of dissatisfaction towards her ex when her girlfriends would air their own sexual frustrations, thinking that if you couldn’t talk to your friends about these sorts of stuff, who can you talk to, and that whatever women said about men in the company of other women, were nowhere near as bad as how men would be talking about them.

But this just feels wrong. She knew she shouldn’t be hearing this, let alone give rapt attention. _This is for work_ , she told herself feebly, knowing perfectly well that work was merely a convenient scapegoat for feeding her shameful curiosity.

The women seem to still be prodding Lorelai for more details and Robin could hardly bare it. Michelle was on her phone, fitting in perfectly with the other patrons who weren’t behaving conspicuously as though they were eavesdropping.

“Well,” Lorelai started, supposedly sufficiently cajoled to spill the details now. “Let’s just say he’s very… _thorough_. Brilliant with his fingers.” said Lorelai. “And his mouth—god I miss his mouth.”

Robin was at wits end, trying hard not to think of precisely what Lorelai was saying. Fingers. Mouth.

“And his tongue— oh man, might be the best tongue in London!”

Much laughter at this. Robin felt very hot suddenly, as though the restaurant had turned down their AC. The more Robin bullied her brain not to think of Cormoran’s tongue, the more her mind’s eye zoomed in on his mouth as he talked. _Best tongue in London_. Jesus!

“He’s got the most marvellous arse. I always just wanted to take a fucking bite.” Lorelai continued. “And he would do this thing where we get to my place and would just eat me right by my front door.”

Robin had accidentally toppled her glass at this and both she and Michelle had to swiftly move to keep from wetting themselves with her spilled water. _Oh god_. But she, Michelle, and the nearby waiter were swift.

The ladies on the table had also stopped at this little commotion, but continued as though uninterrupted when Robin settled back down.

“Anyway,” Lorelai continued. “Never been with anyone what was just up for anything, you know?”

“Damn.” said Ellen. “I fucking wish Clayton would change it up a bit too. You know, I haven’t had a tongue on my clit in months?”

This made Michelle finally react, mouth twisting in mild disgust. Putting down her club sandwich that she was about to bite into.

“But what’s it like?” April asked. “You know, with his leg?”

Robin’s eyes darted to Michelle’s face again. Her expression remained impassive.

“Well, we weren’t copying the Kama Sutra cover to cover,” Lorelai shared. “But not a big deal for the most part. God and I even installed a fucking bar in the shower because he liked—”

“A bar?” Ellen asked, sounding surprised. “Like, for old people?”

“Don’t be ableist, Ellen. Yes, a bar! He was into that, blowies and titjobs in the shower—”

Robin’s face felt so red and thick with emotions she couldn’t quite explain that she thought she was starting to feel as though she needed some air.

“You okay?” Michelle asked, looking a little concerned at her now. Robin wondered what she must look like.

She shook her head, trying desperately to clear it of the scene forming in her mind’s eye. Of a naked, hairy man under the shower, with a woman knelt in front of him. Robin’s never done that. Not in the shower! And not with her tits—!

 _What does that have to do with anything?_ she asked her horrified self. _What does it matter if you’ve never done that?_

The women seemed to have spent the past moments teasing Lorelai whose only response was, “Believe me, darlings, he well deserved it.”

“What about the new one, then?” Ellen prodded. “Gaspard? How’s he faring?”

“I come, if that’s what you’re asking.” said Lorelai, sounding mildly disinterested. “He’s quite the letdown. Thought he’d be more, you know, passionate and sexy. I miss being bent over surfaces and just _eaten_ from behind, you know? Mr. Hephaestus would do this thing where he’d come by the shop, pin me in one of the dressing rooms for a quickie and just _leave_! Not even a hello! So hot.”

“What happened then, if things with Mr. Hephaestus were that great?”

Lorelai laughed, in a way that told Robin she wasn’t amused. “Great? Of course it hadn’t been great. Men who fuck well love poorly, babes.”

Robin took her handbag, intending to pay and for her and Michelle to try again some other time with Ellen. Robin had had enough, feeling wrung out and unhappy somehow. Feeling sorry for Lorelai who clearly sustained some damage, from Cormoran whose privacy had been violated because Robin was there to hear, for herself because… she wasn’t exactly sure, but she felt sorry nonetheless.

Robin gestured for the waiter.

“I’ll bring the car ‘round.” Michelle offered, standing up to leave as Robin waited for her credit card.

“Pity Strike was a total bastard,” said Lorelai and the mention of his name made Robin’s stomach jolt. “Because he really was the most dazzling fuck.”

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the crown where matthew goode's character called one of his plentiful lovers a "most dazzling fuck" lol


End file.
